Daniel Slade named assistant professor of biochemistry

Slade is one of 19 new faculty members that were recently hired in the college. New positions were identified to bring new talent to its focus areas, including food and health, infectious disease, biodesign and processing, and agricultural profitability and environmental sustainability. The new faculty members are distributed across teaching, research, and Extension.

He received his bachelor's degree in chemistry in 2002 from Wofford College and doctorate in biochemistry in 2007 from the University of South Carolina..

Slade’s lab works at the interface of chemistry and biology to determine the role of the microbiome in cancer using chemical biology, X-ray crystallography, biochemistry, molecular genetics, enzymology, and cell biology. More than 15 percent of carcinomas can be attributed to known infectious agents such as bacteria and viruses including Fusobacterium nucleatum, a Gram-negative bacterium that is significantly overrepresented in the colonic tissue of patients with colorectal cancer.

Slade’s current research focuses on uncovering F. Nucleatum proteins that are upregulated during infection in colorectal cancer, as well as exploring the role of autotransporters in inflammation and cancer, and developing inhibitors and chemical probes that target the protease family of autotransporters.

Slade was a National Institutes of Health Fellow at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.